Wrestling with Ethical Issues in Studying Illiberalism: Some Remarks from the U.S. Context

Abstract

Knowledge production has always been intrinsically correlated to politics and power hierarchy. In the U.S. academic system, producing scholarship on highly polarizing topics such as illiberalism faces specific challenges. Classic ethical and epistemological issues are more difficult to address in a neoliberal framework that pushes for interaction with the policy world and for external fundraising. Moreover, both institutionalized and peer pressures on a normative definition of “liberalism” and its “enemies,” which often does not allow for both conservative and leftist interpretations of liberalism, reduces the space for discussion and may push for some spirals of silence to take form. This paper reflects on these challenges on the basis of more than a decade spent at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.